No, keep the OTR shows the way they now sound, do not change anything.

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Jammer

Joined: 19 Jan 2011Posts: 5

Posted: Wed Jan 19, 2011 3:11 am Post subject: I would like to Remix the audio for many OTR shows

Hi folks.

I am a big OTR fan, my favorites are the 1950's Sci Fis and CBSMT.Here is what I would like to do if it is legal, as copyright law is a factor of worry.

I would like to start with my favorite episodes of old radio shows (Sci Fi) and Digitally remaster them from the best quality sources and remixed/remove advertisements and convert them back to Ipod size files - The goal being the best quality and small size of of an audio-file (perhaps a low bit rate/ variable bit rate mp3 or ACC) I have years of experience remixing mostly a single track in order to improve a single audio channel as much as possible- an attempt to make dirty-mono recordings sound like newer stereo ones with more fullness to the tone without over doing things, and it will take time, but I feel I'm the man for the job, as I am dying to start right now!

Once I find the best quality recordings of many OTR shows I can save them to 64 bit wave files for editing (past cd quality) and start removing advertising, removing hiss, and one BIG improvement I can make is to insert a tiny time delay between a Right and Left channel to simulate good stereo separation. I have remixed audio as a hobby for almost 15 years, it will be very easy to make these recordings sound better, even most Stereo like. For example: Some of the old tape recordings have typical 60 cycle BUZZ on them- Very annoying, but easy to wipe out when mixed into stereo and next each channel they cancels the other one's buzz out- gone. Hiss can be removed, tiny amounts of re-verb can provide more fullness, but I would never want to over produce any of the original sound-effects.

I have had the handle Jammer for many years. I love all kinds of music and went to school to learn to mix audio, while I actually learned a lot more about mixing on my own computer after writing my own songs. I record Alternative Banjo Instrumentals ALTERNATIVE GENRE- not bluegrass. As a matter of fact I normally spent a great deal more time producing a single instrumental track than I do writing the instrumental. In other words I have spent many years learning how to change the tone of my instrument by remixing a single track every way possible. Not all of my instrumentals have the best tone, almost none are bluegrass, mostly Jazz like- Here is one of my pages of mp3s- If one song sounds bad please move on to the next as there are many, some are not my best. www.songplanet.com/jammer -- some are better than others,' having trouble deleting instrumentals. These mp3s might give folks an idea of how much of a change heavy producing can do for a bare bones single cheap microphone recorded audio track. OTR is mostly all mono- AM radio recordings, and many may agree tons of them would sound better remixed.

I managed to change the tone quality of my banjo so far that some refuse to believe it's not a guitar. I would be interested if we have a demand for such a project out there. The most drastic change would be less or no hiss, no advertisements, and a stereo separation which would sound great with headphones. Of course EQ, reverb, echos and a host of other things can be done but my goal wold be to only clean up the sound and add just a hint of a stereo separation. I learned how to make mono recordings to sound like fairly full stereo recordings. I very much would like to remaster some of these radio shows, but I still wish to keep a small file size when done, perhaps a final file being a VBR MP3 or a low bit-rate AAC file which Itunes/Ipod/WinAmp and many other players are moving to now.

Please contact me and let me know what you think. I have been remixing single tracks into much improved ones for many years. I believe in my heart that I can take many of the OTR shows and clean the audio up without over-producing or adding unwanted effects etc... My goal is only the cleanest recording possible with just a hint of stereo separation. I feel the difference would be most noticeable and early trials are very favorable.

I need to know if there is any interest in this, as it takes a long time to get the best results and I wold not want to do all of that if few members wanted to hear remixes to clean up the worse parts of such audio files.

I feel I can make these shows sound great if we have an interest in hearing remixes. My goal is to clean up the bad sounds and only do enough to improve the tone quality and nothing more.

I hope everyone will weigh in on this idea. If I get a green light I will be sure to label the files in another way so they never get confused with the originals. Also I am thinking perhaps I could release a solid TEN HOUR LONG Episodes. (Such as in CBSRMT).

My goal is to clean up the audio, to make it more clear, add a slight audio lag between the channels in order to produce a fuller stereo like effect AND to remove all commercials.

What you're proposing sounds pretty cool, as long as you exercise some restraint. No need to add sound effects and stuff that wasn't there in the first place. That was the major downside of the "remastered" Star Trek. The stuff they added didn't really fit in with the original stuff. That and they cut each episode's running time by about nine minutes.

That said, I have to wonder how much "remixing" you can do when all you have to work with is a mono source. A lot of those old recordings were done live with a single mic. There wasn't any post production as we know it today where are separate tracks for everything and these are mixed down to two channels.

What you're proposing sounds pretty cool, as long as you exercise some restraint. No need to add sound effects and stuff that wasn't there in the first place. That was the major downside of the "remastered" Star Trek. The stuff they added didn't really fit in with the original stuff. That and they cut each episode's running time by about nine minutes.

That said, I have to wonder how much "remixing" you can do when all you have to work with is a mono source. A lot of those old recordings were done live with a single mic. There wasn't any post production as we know it today where are separate tracks for everything and these are mixed down to two channels.

Thanks for the support. I agree that I do not wish to add sounds that make the recording sound over produced, fake, or in anyway take away from the natural feel these mono sources had in the first place.

I have discovered MANY methods of remixing single tracks to help them sound better over the years. One can remove tape hiss, 60 cycle hum, advertisements, and personally I feel converting a mono track into 2 stereo tracks with just a very small time delay between the tracks can do wonders to producing a real "full" sound. It's also possible to take a single mono track and divide it up upon many copies and make slight changes to each one and later mix them all together a certain way- which can often help in "EQing" problems I find. Please believe me my goal is to clean up the worse recordings and hop-fulling improve many others by using subtle techniques that have proven to make mono tracks sound fuller by simply making them into two tracks and introducing a very small time delay between channels- I find such mixing really improves the old mono recordings, but I do NOT want to over-produce anything. I wish to make the OTR shows sound a little better, not worse- and that is a promise.

I might start on some OTR shows very soon. I could combine the original track with the remix and add along a text showing what changes where made to improve things. I have discovered many things that help a mono track sound better, and I truly enjoy doing such work.

I hope the Admin does not mind me saying this. It seems I have found many interested people in this project that have posted on another OTR radio site. If anyone is curious how things progress I will likely be on the Relic Radio forums. There was much more interest over there, so it only seemed logical.

It's funny as I read this I am also doing similar things: I am trying to fix the sound (almost impossible) on the series "Tales of the Texas Rangers" and I am also attempting to clean up "Lum and Abner" (this is proving to be successful; also on the early Lum and Abner I removing about 5 minutes worth of crummy organ music and horrible Horlick's commericals. If I ever pass them back to anyone, I will note this. Plus I am greatly improving the sound (at least, so far.)

It's funny as I read this I am also doing similar things: I am trying to fix the sound (almost impossible) on the series "Tales of the Texas Rangers" and I am also attempting to clean up "Lum and Abner" (this is proving to be successful; also on the early Lum and Abner I removing about 5 minutes worth of crummy organ music and horrible Horlick's commericals. If I ever pass them back to anyone, I will note this. Plus I am greatly improving the sound (at least, so far.)

If you want to talk particulars, we can do that...

Yeah at first I was surprised that nobody else had seemed to of brought the subject up before now, so I'm happy to learn we have others doing the same thing. God only knows we sure have enough OTR shows to choose from to clean up.

I would very much like to stay friends so we can exchange ideas on these projects for many good reasons. I believe we have much to gain by sharing our ideas with each other, and we could possible save the other from "re-doing" the same episode at some point.

Because of my music I often post my email in public, despite all of the spam it attracts by doing so. If you mark your email IMPORTANT I will be certain to see it. I can be reached here of course, but the most direct route to get a hold of me 24/7 (sorry my cell phone does not link to email) would be to Email me at: Jammer@inbox.com -- My email provider might first send you an email back to make sure your not a massive spammer or a letter from a so called common virus infested "Zombie Computer" so after you email me, and I really hope you do, please be on the lookout for a one-time-only letter sent back to you just to verify you are human and not a massive auto-bot spammer. After that we can email all we like without any intervention of the email service prover. I also could give you my phone # via email if you are not too shy to discuss these projects together, as I truly believe we can only learn from each other, I know of almost nobody else that has really seriously attempted to sit down and plow through hundreds of OTR shows with the main goal being to mainly clean them up for a more natural feel that has often been lost somehow after 50 or years of being first produced for a massive radio audience.

Again, it's Jammer@inbox.com and I would love to start a private conversation about both of our ideas on remixing concepts at play right now. I feel all of friends here (the OTR fans) could use all of the help we can get due to the sheer high amount of thousands of radio shows without what first appears too be almost no quality control over the audio quality. The worse thing we can do is give the public another option to listen too, so no harm is really being done in my eyes and ears. We should still have the original, OTR show copies in circulation and being hosted by many dedicated listeners across the English speak-en world. So it should not appear as if we are destroying anything like Ted Turned was accused of we he first started colorizing his newly bough collection (as of then) of classic films, as it first appeared Turned had no intention of giving the fans any choice between the original versions and his newly colorized and remastered ones. If not you and I then sooner or later somebody else would of stepped up to the same plate.

Perhaps we could even discuss a more Open Source like Project, if more fans have the "know how" and motivation to share their time as well maybe we can come up with a type of remixed"-standard" we could all have our input shared. We could also share file samples if enough were to agree on using such works. Personally I many possibilities as long as the folks doing the remixing have the "know-how" and lots of spare time to dedicate to this.

In conclusion, I hold certificates from The Recording Workshop in southern Ohio. The school was not too far from the Ohio River. Yet very little was taught in the class about remixing a single channel of audio, we delta mostly with multi-tracking recording on old-school large 1970's Mixers in studios built in the 1960's, and we just dabbled a tiny bit on computer mixing back in 1998. Most of what I have to bring to the table are computer remixing skills I learned from the hundreds of instrumentals I wrote and remixed to get the tone in my head out into the public file, and it was many many hours of tedious work. I even went as far as heavily distorted banjo that sounded most like a Fender Strat guitar = Cry Baby Wah pedal and tube distortion etc, and it was some of the most fun of my life!

My best to you and your loved ones. I look forward to future discussions, I hope.

I tried to clean up some shows with Adobe Audition, which is a pretty good program, but it took forever and the results were much less than I was expecting.

But if you want to try it, more power to you. Good luck with your efforts and welcome to the forum.

Brad

If Adobe Audition is the program I am familiar with, then it's a good mixing programing (imho!). Can you advise is "Adobe Audition" a FREE & very popular computer program used by many bands and solo artists to mix their music with?

If I am thinking of the wrong program then 'I ask you forgive me and to over-look the rest of this reply.

As I recall Adobe Audition is an open source project for what has slowly became a pretty darn good audio mixing program. The only problems I had of it was some system bugs and loads of 3rd party plug ins.

[A few technical points about how I remix (some may wish to skip reading this):]

I use primarily three audio programs for all of my remixing, no matter how simple nor how complex the task may be:
#1) I love GoldWave because I bought it nearly ten years ago and understand it is the best audio editor in it's price range (Well under $100 U.S.D and it is worth every penny I highly recommend it), next I use
#2) Sony's Sound Forge (expensive) because it was already installed on this used computer when I purchased it from my guitar playing friend. My computer also came with Goldwave's sister program:
#3: "Multiquence" (also) installed upon my computer when I bought it. I use this program for multi--tracking, and mastering final songs, or in this case, for finalizing and mixing down to the final smaller Ipod size ACC file which will be set/EQed for Speech. I calculate the final ACC/MP4 file sizes might be aprox 130% of the original source files (' best I can do so far).

Also I discovered one can use Multiquence to make multiple clones of an original audio track, which allows a user to mix each track in a new way, and letter remix them back to the same format is needed. I have found almost nobody else that bothers to take a single track apart into multi-tracks, make changes to each track, only to remix all of the dissected tracks back together again, but the results can be almost unbelievable.

It's funny as I read this I am also doing similar things: I am trying to fix the sound (almost impossible) on the series "Tales of the Texas Rangers" and I am also attempting to clean up "Lum and Abner" (this is proving to be successful; also on the early Lum and Abner I removing about 5 minutes worth of crummy organ music and horrible Horlick's commericals. If I ever pass them back to anyone, I will note this. Plus I am greatly improving the sound (at least, so far.)

If you want to talk particulars, we can do that...

Yeah at first I was surprised that nobody else had seemed to of brought the subject up before now, so I'm happy to learn we have others doing the same thing. God only knows we sure have enough OTR shows to choose from to clean up.

I would very much like to stay friends so we can exchange ideas on these projects for many good reasons. I believe we have much to gain by sharing our ideas with each other, and we could possible save the other from "re-doing" the same episode at some point.

Because of my music I often post my email in public, despite all of the spam it attracts by doing so. If you mark your email IMPORTANT I will be certain to see it. I can be reached here of course, but the most direct route to get a hold of me 24/7 (sorry my cell phone does not link to email) would be to Email me at: Jammer@inbox.com -- My email provider might first send you an email back to make sure your not a massive spammer or a letter from a so called common virus infested "Zombie Computer" so after you email me, and I really hope you do, please be on the lookout for a one-time-only letter sent back to you just to verify you are human and not a massive auto-bot spammer. After that we can email all we like without any intervention of the email service prover. I also could give you my phone # via email if you are not too shy to discuss these projects together, as I truly believe we can only learn from each other, I know of almost nobody else that has really seriously attempted to sit down and plow through hundreds of OTR shows with the main goal being to mainly clean them up for a more natural feel that has often been lost somehow after 50 or years of being first produced for a massive radio audience.

Again, it's Jammer@inbox.com and I would love to start a private conversation about both of our ideas on remixing concepts at play right now. I feel all of friends here (the OTR fans) could use all of the help we can get due to the sheer high amount of thousands of radio shows without what first appears too be almost no quality control over the audio quality. The worse thing we can do is give the public another option to listen too, so no harm is really being done in my eyes and ears. We should still have the original, OTR show copies in circulation and being hosted by many dedicated listeners across the English speak-en world. So it should not appear as if we are destroying anything like Ted Turned was accused of we he first started colorizing his newly bough collection (as of then) of classic films, as it first appeared Turned had no intention of giving the fans any choice between the original versions and his newly colorized and remastered ones. If not you and I then sooner or later somebody else would of stepped up to the same plate.

Perhaps we could even discuss a more Open Source like Project, if more fans have the "know how" and motivation to share their time as well maybe we can come up with a type of remixed"-standard" we could all have our input shared. We could also share file samples if enough were to agree on using such works. Personally I many possibilities as long as the folks doing the remixing have the "know-how" and lots of spare time to dedicate to this.

In conclusion, I hold certificates from The Recording Workshop in southern Ohio. The school was not too far from the Ohio River. Yet very little was taught in the class about remixing a single channel of audio, we delta mostly with multi-tracking recording on old-school large 1970's Mixers in studios built in the 1960's, and we just dabbled a tiny bit on computer mixing back in 1998. Most of what I have to bring to the table are computer remixing skills I learned from the hundreds of instrumentals I wrote and remixed to get the tone in my head out into the public file, and it was many many hours of tedious work. I even went as far as heavily distorted banjo that sounded most like a Fender Strat guitar = Cry Baby Wah pedal and tube distortion etc, and it was some of the most fun of my life!

My best to you and your loved ones. I look forward to future discussions, I hope.

Jammer

(aka: "Terry" lol)

It's funny (again) I used to be a professional musician and have written some movie soundtracks in the past. But I no longer do that professionally, although I do still write for some local bands.

I'm not sure *exactly* where we are going with this conversation because I am not sure exactly what it is you do with your recordings.

Perhaps if I told you one of my sidelines, you could "work off me" and then we'll know where we stand.

I am in the process of cleaning up my otr (very slow work and I have no time for it, frankly) and for my own **personal collection** I am in the process of removing the music contained inside the mp3s.

As far as noise reductions, I just run it through a high pass filter at about 200Hz and then a noise reduction of about -25dbs. This will remove most of the offending noise.

Sometimes I have to amplify the recording. Some recording were recordered (or transferred anyway) notoriously loud (Doctor Sixgun comes to mind) and in that case I have to "de-amplify" (not sure that's even a word.)

If I make *my* OTR music-free, does that make me a bad guy? I'm 100% for preservation of OTR in it's original form but I bypass all the music. Am I a heel?_________________http://otrbuffet.blogspot.com

Hey Jimbo, my wife speeds forward through all the music that appears on OTR, like many comedy shows had in the earlier years. I am listening to the content of the show, not their music. I think the music was there for the live audience. Sort of entertainment while it gave the actors a break.

Jammer,
I was inspired by you. I went out and found the mp3 editing tool Audacity, and picked a CBSRMT file to work on. I did nothing like you were talking about, as less than a novice, it wasn't even up for consideration. But I do feel like I had a good result at removing the commercial breaks out of CBSRMT "episode 32, After the Verdict." I loaded my edited file out to the ftp location under the folder tomtj, with the prefix, "cut". If somebody would care to do a spot check, I think it is already to replace the one in the member area. And with the simplest wisp of encouragement, I would work on others periodically. It was kind of fun for a geek like me. I think it's a good and worthwhile improvement if you guys agree. With 45,000 files out there, we are sure to have plenty of simple improvements that could be made short of Jammer's skill set.

Jammer,
I just re-read your inital post here. I just wanted to weigh in against compiling a ten hour collection of episodes in a single stream. At least I would like to see the original episodes maintained as an option. Having the hour long "bite size" episodes is very desirable to me.

I like the ideas for cleaning up the sound. As others have said, as long as it doesn't add any 'effects' or unnatural elements to the recordings, then great.

I'm glad I'm not alone in skipping most of the music numbers. They always seem to me like filler As I generally listen while in bed before I drift off, I hate having to bother skipping past long music breaks to get back to the show.

About the only exception to this is the Les Paul Trio as the musical guest on various comedy shows in the 40's. There's some mind-blowing (pre Mary Ford) performances of Les's from that era that feature electric guitar sounds 30 years ahead of their time.

There is a part of me that feels very very guilty about doing this... I know the purists are howling. Part of me is howling about it too - but I've been listening long enough to not want to hear 2:00 openings and 2:30 minute musical numbers and needless things in there.

Just an aside, speaking of production techniques; does anyone know if the openings of many shows were pre-recorded, or just played live each broadcast?

I ask because many show's opening themes or 'opening skits- Like Lum and Abner's thats our ring bit' sound so precisely exact each time that I figure it has to be pre-recorded. It's always made me wonder how they did it way back when... IE; play a pre-recorded theme off a disk, then go live to the announcer?

I've always wanted to know more technical details of how the shows were done: IE mic layouts, broadcast and recording equipment and setup, the live sound mixing and engineering in the booth from various mics and pre-recorded elements, especially of a stage performance with several actors, announcer, orchestra, plus sound man. The fact that much of it sounds so seamless and like 'one mic' actually means much more production went into the sound than we tend to think, because I know enough about audio to know that excellent sound from multiple sources on a big sound stage NEVER happens by accident.

I've read as much as I've been able to find on the tech aspects of OTR, but details are hard to come by.

I think the answer to your question varies... however, I think 90% of the music in the show openings (at least prior to 1945 or so) were different each time - used a live orchestra or organ, etc.._________________http://otrbuffet.blogspot.com

Cleaning up OTR shows is an excellent idea. I enjoy the scripts primarily and some of the advertising, as it does reflect the culture of the times. However some are annoying to the point of driving one to lunacy.
Audio quality of the radio plays themselves is the primary focus and many need rehabilitation. To remove every nick, tick and buzz would be extremely time consuming. If there was a way to spread out the tasks, assemble a Clean-Up group or something, with an agreed upon standard of production, and pre-discussion of what to retain and what to remove, and a set of shows for each contributor to work on, we could perhaps take OTR to another level, certainly to preserve for future generations.

In my first days of OTR enthusiasm I listened to every Sherlock Holmes episode I could get ahold of. The Petry Wine and the Hair Tonic ads seemed to be longer than the scripts! So in that arena I am strongly in favor of removing useless adverts.

I spend what time I can recording and assembling radio files with
LP recorder and LP ripper (from Australia) which is a very basic software. It creates wav files which can be converted to mp3. Any sound through the computer sound card can be recorded, so playing radio shows from any site can be recorded. By playing sequential files (like Paul Temple files where 11 or so files make a single episode-and 8 episodes to a complete show) through Nero player for example, using pause/record in sequence, I can make a whole episode file, save it and reconvert to mp3.
I use a Verbatim external hard drive to store = 298 GB.

It's basic stuff and no audio correction experience yet. I see Nero player has some editing features and LP recorder has some editing features as well but I know not how to manage them. A project for my retirement years which are coming soon.

Just putting it out there if anyone is looking for a way to start out tinkering with radio show files. Finally, saving the mp3 files to a flash drive and plugging in to any USB able sound system provides a great way to listen.